


after plaid shirt days (and nights when you made me you own)

by mercurials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Post-Break Up, kinda idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25376344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurials/pseuds/mercurials
Summary: And sometimes, “loving you is easy. Like breathing. Easier.” is just background noise. It doesn’t phase you at this point. Another promise left up in the air, big deal.or, Kei navigates life after freckles and sunshine through smiles.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 54





	after plaid shirt days (and nights when you made me you own)

_Your blue toothbrush is still in the bathroom, hanging,_ _your fingerprints on the edge of my bedside table, your sleep-soaked_ _breath still humming through the air conditioning vents, steady,_ _steady, slow. Some mornings I wake up and brew coffee for two._

_It is better this way._

_—_ **_honey, i’m home,_ ** _marla miniano._

  
  
  


There’s a certain ache in following a recipe to the T and the dish still resulting in something that’s vaguely off. Something you can’t put your finger on, something right at the tip of your tongue. The frustration isn’t something to be served with the dish, but you eat with it at the crevices of your chest anyway, ignoring the urge to just pick up your phone and call him back because _god_ , you miss him and you can’t ever get this Katsudon to taste like it should; to taste like home.

Tsukishima Kei is not the type of person to give in to his urges, nor lower his pride; so he glares at the phone across the table and eats his too-salty meal with a heaping side of regret tugging in his chest. He finishes his dinner alone for the third week running. He’s still trying to convince himself that it’s better this way. A flash of brown-green hair and a constellation of freckles-- one he knows like the back of his hand-- flash in his mind as he washes his dishes, and he physically flinches, sending water splashing on his glasses. A peal of familiar laughter rings in his ears because his mind keeps reminding him that there’s someone out there-- used to be someone out there who would find this amusing, and Kei leaves his dishes unwashed and headed straight for his room, his head spinning.

Something Kei has accepted, though, is that time doesn’t make it easier. He’s spent all of three weeks just letting himself feel (but never giving in to any urges, that’s strictly off-limits) and decided that he’d find it easier to breathe, to go back to normal, with time. That theory promptly slapped him in the face two weeks in, when he caught himself reading through old text messages and he noticed his heart sinking two meters with every kaomoji Tadashi used.

Kei sleeps at the left side of the bed. The very left, at the edge most nights, because Yamaguchi Tadashi, though gentle when awake, is a force to be reckoned with when asleep. He clings and kicks and flails and god, Kei just wants to make it to his first class on time. It doesn’t help that Tadashi sleeps like the dead, so any hopes of him releasing his death grip on Kei’s waist just ceases to exist. Kei has to pretend he doesn’t like it, for the sake of his class attendance. Tadashi usually wakes up first, and Kei shortly after. Tadashi notices that he’s clinging to Kei, says nothing about it, and snuggles closer, and Kei has to pretend to complain.

Sometimes, Tadashi manages to intertwine their fingers when he’s sleeping. In the car, with Kei’s right hand on the wheel, and his left linked with a sleeping Tadashi’s. Or, at night, when Kei falls asleep first, Tadashi will hold his hand before sleeping, and Kei will wake up with their hands clasped together.

These days, Kei still finds himself at the very edge of the left side of the bed, his hands intertwined. He makes it to class on time.

-

  
  


One night, under the blankets, Tadashi had told Kei, “Loving you is really easy.”

Kei had fallen silent at the sudden confession, eyes falling to the blanket, but Tadashi didn’t miss the pink tint on his ears. So, with a laugh, he continues, “I mean, it’s one thing to like someone, and another to love them, and I think after all these years, I can tell the difference very clearly now.”

“Really,” is all Kei chooses to respond with, and Tadashi smiles at him.

“Yeah, really,” he then says. “Loving you is easy. Like breathing, or blinking. Like second nature. Easier.”

They fall asleep with those words hung above them, souls entwined under flesh and bone and weighted blankets.

-

Kei learned to do his taxes by himself. They don’t teach you things like that in high school. They teach you calculus and the probability of you picking a blue pen when there are four pinks, two blues, and seven greens, but not taxes, nor emotional confrontation, nor how to get back the boy you’ve loved for twelve years and lost to neglect. Another thing they do not teach you in high school is that the witnesses of your whispers at three am and handholding under the breakfast table will remain when your love will not.

He mindlessly stares at the mug on the rack by the sink, newly washed because he made coffee for two today. He looks at the silver refrigerator humming. The light over the breakfast bar flickering. It’s been flickering for maybe three days now, and Kei can’t bring himself to change it because usually, Tadashi had to nag at him to do it, and now whenever he looks up during breakfast and sees it flicker, he ignores it in favor of drinking his coffee, once again one sugar packet too sweet. He’ll let the lightbulb burn out before buying a new one, and he’ll change it when eating dinner gets inconvenient with only the living room light.

He looks at something else, and the fancy wine glasses on the cupboard that they bought two winters ago per Tadashi’s insistence and Kei quotes, “we can use it on special occasions!” look back at him. There are two of them, placed side by side. They haven’t used those. Kei gets up and goes to a nearby cafe because he finds this place actually insufferable. 

Kei stays in contact with Yachi Hitoka for a multitude of reasons, all of which he would admit to. Things like, _she’s a friend from high school,_ and _it’s handy to have a graphic designer in your contact list_ . One thing he will not admit, though, is that their message inbox reads _“Is he doing well?”_ in blue and _“Yes, Tsukishima-kun. He seems to be doing okay. Why don’t you try talking to him again?”_ in gray, and a beat of silence on Kei’s part before he exits the application and turns his phone off. 

-

This is what Kei knows:

Tadashi had run out.

This comes to Kei cold and heavy on a Thursday morning, when he woke up, no hands intertwined with his own, and his ribcage felt two tons heavy under his skin. That week they had barely spoken, and Tadashi had exhausted himself to find an excuse not to use any more energy to talk to Kei. He knows this, and he’s stayed silent and given Tadashi the space he needed.

Before sleeping the night before, Kei had thought that it would go away, whatever it was that hung between them, creating distance between them. Tadashi had slept facing the wall, and when Kei peeked from under his lashes when he didn’t feel arms around him, he closed his eyes and prayed until he slept.

That morning, Kei felt like the stars were laughing at him and his silent prayers because Tadashi sighed and said to him, “Kei, this isn’t easy for me.”

“What?”

“It hasn’t been easy for a long time now,”

That’s all Kei can remember from that morning, the rest of the events coming to him in a blur. Three weeks can feel like twelve years when your brain is spiraling. Did Tadashi cry? Did he slam the door behind him? Kei wants to remember. He wants to feel it again, the rawness and vulnerability, as vivid as possible. He wants to feel.

Kei tries to acquaint himself with the fact that the promises made when you were two six-year-olds and have scratches on your knees do not apply when you’re both sixteen and feel like your heart is a vessel two meters too big for your tiny adolescent chest, or when you’re twenty-one and the city is suffocating and all kinds of overwhelming. 

And sometimes, “loving you is easy. Like breathing. Easier.” is just background noise. It doesn’t phase you at this point. Another promise left up in the air, big deal. 

Tadashi doesn’t come home that night, and Kei’s phone doesn’t vibrate with a response from him. Tadashi still has the keys to the apartment. 

Kei doesn’t see him until three days later when he catches Tadashi leaving their apartment, suitcases filled. They don’t say anything, but Tadashi stops beside Kei for a moment. They don’t say anything, and Tadashi walks out and Kei doesn’t follow.

-

It takes him all of three weeks to finally cry, to finally ask himself if he had chased after Tadashi, would that have made him stay? To stop eating his regret with his dinners. To finally change the flickering lightbulb. To reply to Yachi’s messages. To take a train to Miyagi after contacting Tadashi’s mother. To run up a familiar set of stairs and knock on a door he knew better when he was sixteen. 

When Tadashi opens his bedroom door, Kei sees him and he sees home.

He looks at Tadashi, freckles, and sunshine, and tanned skin, and cropped hair, and all of him just feels like home. His voice comes out shaky, and Tadashi doesn’t mind.

  
  
  


_For years I tried to learn how_

_to live by myself,_

_but you taught me the difference_

_between that and being able_

_to live with myself._

_—_ **_guest / list,_ ** _marla miniano._

  
  



End file.
